Σάββατο, 27 Ιουνίου 2015

"And they shall know no fear"

Wow! It's been a year since I have last written here. Long time. Well, life has been interesting. New country (England), new city (London), new girlfriend (this one is sane), new workplace (still drilling teeth though). My addiction to lead and plastic miniatures is still the same, and unfortunately, I am in a country where you can get almost anything you want. Most of my collection is back in Greece, so I had to get some new miniatures.

One of the things I really liked about British wargaming, was Games Workshop. Seriously. Their fluff is excellent, they had some very interesting games (Warhammer Ancients is still an excellent system in my book, and who can forget Man O War and Blood Bowl?). Unfortunately, their prices and incistence to make only 28mm miniatures put them out of my league. But wait, there is always a solution. What if I buy 15mm proxy miniatures? And use rule systems that are better suited to skirmish games, like Flying Lead and Song of Blades and Heroes and In The Emperor's Name? Would that work? Why the heck not?

There are quite a few 15mm proxies for Space Marines out there. Which is surprising, as GW smites with Cease and Desist orders anything that comes close to infringing their copyright. Thankfully, they can't do that to the game that was one of the inspirations for Warhammer 40K; Laserburn. Laserburn is still around and the rules and miniatures can be bought from www.15mm.co.uk.

When it comes to Space Marines, I really like the Ultramarines, because of their blue and white uniform and their plain simple vanilla Space Marine flavour. So I got me a bunch of Imperial troopers and started painting them. This is the first batch:

As you can see, they are not really GW Space Marines. On the other hand, as GW borrowed heavily from the Laserburn fluff, they are not that different either. Khurasan has some that are pretty close to the originals, but I just felt like going old-skool here and I can't say I am disappointed. I also have some of their Imperial Troopers to use as Space Marines in normal power armor and some Disciples of the Redemption to use as Chaos Space Marines. Those last ones are next on the bench, so I guess you'll see what they look like by next weekend.